Walking through the churchyard, I saw a shape.
There can be no escape
From the tomb.
The gloom
Is there
For those who care
To look beyond a sunny day.
continuing on my way
I passed that tree,
That did loom
Over tomb
And me.
Walking through the leaves
I perceive
the familiar churchyard.
It is writ large
on these weathered stones
“man is skin and bones.
All we are turns to dust.
Here men are beyond lust.
They sleep fast
And do not ask
Who does pass
By
With a doleful sigh”.
No more are men buried here.
The place is near
to my home.
I am but skin and bone.
I feel the carpet warm as I write.
The morning light
Will soon dispel the remains of night
For a time at least
then eternal peace.
(All Saints Church is close to my home. The graveyard is long since disused although the existing graves are maintained. http://www.allsaintsuppernorwood.co.uk/).
“Hello?”
I halted my walk through All Saints Churchyard and turned enquiringly in the direction of the voice. The speaker, having caught my attention continued thus,
“Why are these leaning? The stones I mean”, he said.
“I don’t know” I replied, continuing on my way home.
Perhaps my response to the above question was a little terse. However I was unsure as to why a total stranger should accost me with such a peculiar question and I had no wish to stand around debating matters about which I knew little, in a churchyard as evening fell. Afterwards however I began to ponder on this strange question. My pondering did not revolve around why gravestones lean (I assume that over time they tend to tilt). Rather my thoughts centred around the people residing under said stones. When one is dead surely one has no interest in whether the stone above your head is dead straight or leaning like a man who has just consumed 10 pints of strong beer? The sleepers in that quiet earth will, I assume rest with the same repose irrespective of whether the stone above their head tilts or stands straight as a die?
The incident brought to mind the closing lines of Brontae’s Wuthering Heights,
“I sought, and soon discovered, the three headstones on the slope next the moor: on middle one grey, and half buried in the heath; Edgar Linton’s only harmonized by the turf and moss creeping up its foot; Heathcliff’s still bare.
I lingered round them, under that benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth”.
The click of heels fades.
Silence crashes over him in waves.
Sadness contends with rage.
The turning of a new page
Or a man digging his own grave?
A book of poems upon his grave
Could not the poet save.
The few his words touched
Failed to keep him from the dust.
Saturday morning.
The sun is hot.
Children kick a ball on the school playing fields, their animated voices filling the mid morning air.
A dog barks.
I enter the graveyard, it’s stones marking my way home.
Bending, I trace the weathered stone resting peacefully in the grass. Being blind I know not who slumbers below, but hope they sleep well.
Birds sing. My dog investigates the plants growing in and around the grave, his warm head finds my hand, looking for an answer, “why have we stopped so close to home?” he seems to ask.
Turning, I run my hands over the rough bark of a huge tree. I notice a split in the midst of this mighty oak. Slowly the tree is dying. It won’t go soon unless storm uproots it but, in time the split will deepen, church wardens will consult. Perhaps staves will be employed to support the tree or, maybe a few blows of the woodman’s axe will bring it down for the safety of the community.
Intellectually I know death will one day find me but, standing here I feel no fear, only a curiosity about this place.
Sunshine
A graveyard
Underground?
No not yet
My dog found something in a graveyard, was it a bone I wonder? Chomp went his jaws, bone or whatever it was consigned to oblivion, to rumble and tumble in a canine’s stomach. Then out again, back to the ground, from the earth we come and to the earth we shall return.
K Morris - Poet 